This was posted to the NY Rensselaer list and I have permission from the author to pass it I. If you are on other NY state lists, you might want to pass it on but get permission from the listowner first. I contacted Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's counsel office yesterday to tell them that raising the price of birth, marriage and death certificates from $11 to $22 would cause a great decline in requests for those certificates and impact negatively on our search for ancestors. As a result, the state would not raise any extra money that way. I suggested that $14-15 would be about the maximum price that would allow them to bring in additional money even though the number of certificate requests would be reduced due to any higher fee. Since 9/11, the state has been in financial trouble. Between this year and next, it is projected that there will be a 14 billion dollar shortfall. State and many county sales taxes are probably going to rise. Property taxes should rise. School taxes will also rise if the governor's plan is adhered to. Hospitals will probably receive less funding. Etc., etc. As genealogists, we cannot expect the price of certificates to remain the same no matter how much we might wish for it. Therefore, I tried to suggest a reasonable price increase. It is possible that other list members might also wish to make a similar suggestion. We can't hire someone to lobby for us, but we could individually phone or write to Senator Bruno's office. Writing would take too long to be effective because the budget is a month past due, and the Legislature promised to start dealing with individual budget bills yesterday. The person who would receive the call and tally the comments is Louise at 518-455-2595. Since people all over the country request the certificates, you do not have to be a New Yorker to make this call to Louise. A doubling of the fee will cause a lot fewer certificates to be requested and the sum of genealogical knowledge will suffer as a result. After people get these certificates, they very often share that information with others, including copies of the certificates. I think that what has been a steady inflow of data into the genealogical world will become just a trickle at $22 per certificate. If you feel strongly about this issue, call soon. Louise has her lunch hour from 1:30-2:30, so avoid that time period. I will inform the mailing list as soon as I have heard that the price increase has been passed so that nobody wastes their time phoning. -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com Professional Genealogy Research All outgoing mail virus free, scanned by Norton 2002